Featured Spiergle Speculaas large wooden double sided cookie mold.

The cookie name you might be looking for is Springerle. A Swiss Anise cookie dating back to the 14th century. However those were generally small, painfully detailed molds. These look like molds for gingerbread, speculaas, speculoos, Lebkuchen or similar cookie. These cookies rise and spread a little while baking so a less detailed but deeply cut mold is preferable. I bought a cat mold recently with a human sort of face and found out that in Medieval times, cats were considered sort of evil. And art was supposed to be more symbolic than anatomically correct. Often animals with human faces were used to instruct us about good and bad behavior in humans, not unlike a fable. The imagery however by itself cannot date the object because similar popular images were copied for centuries. A signature or the wood itself might be more helpful. Love these molds though! Beautiful and collectible

 

Thank you for the additional information & welcome to the forum!!!

This mold is happily living in its new forever home somewhere across the pond in the UK. The buyer was thrilled with her purchase & I was more than happy to help her out.

 

no. no Swiss person would use a form like Springerle. the widely mentioned form Springerli is an internet fairytale formed after the German word, in Switzerland they are called Änisbrötli.

 

Why not a misspelling of "spiegel," i.e. a mirror or reflection? Like the cookie is a reflection of the mold.

 

Springerli comes from "to spring", a horse springing over a hurdle etc.. has no direct connection to Spiegel. speculatium may have though via the Latin speculum (mirror).